Suicide is a leading cause of jail deaths, both nationally and statewide, and has been rising, nationally, since 2009, according to a state jail death report released last month by Columbia Legal Services.
Between January 2005 and June 2016, 22 inmates died in the Clark County Jail, 16 by suicide. Clark County’s jail had more inmates die by suicide than any other Washington county; King and Pierce counties reported nine and Yakima County had seven in the same time frame, the report states.
The information in the report is based on documentation obtained through the Public Records Act and was supplemented with data submitted to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, federally published data and media reports. Columbia Legal Services, a nonprofit law firm with offices across the state, obtained documentation for 54 of the state’s 59 county, local and joint-jurisdictional jails, the report says.
“Assuming this report is accurate, we’ve had a series of unfortunate events that we’ve been working to reduce over the past several years,” Clark County Jail Chief Ric Bishop said Monday.